Responsible for media relations for the 6th Annual Border Security Expo, a two-day event held at the Phoenix Convention Center. Event organizers wanted to generate local buzz for the event to both increase awareness and promote exhibitors.

Strategy:Leveraging news topic of border issues in Arizona, combined with stunning visuals event provides, execute proactive media outreach to secure morning show lives on-location as well as recorded stories for evening news. Generate coverage in Phoenix and also pitch national reporters who cover immigration or border security.

Tactics:In advance, sent out event media advisories followed by personal pitches to both local and national media outlets. Leveraged local media relationships to line up TV coverage through outreach to individual reporters and producers. During the event, posted photos and updates via Twitter, which generated second wave of media coverage the second day of the event where reporters could interview law enforcement attendees from around the world.

Results:
Coverage from every major news organization in Phoenix, including live television broadcasts on three stations; total of 8 TV stations (Phoenix and Tucscon), 3 newspapers and 4 radio stations. An Associated Press article and photo ran in newspapers across the country. Other national coverage included CNN, New York Times, NPR, FOX News and NBC Nightly News. Here are some examples:

Large businesses are embracing social customer relationship management (CRM) software, with 30% planning to adopt it within the next 24 months, according to new study.

During the next two years 30 percent of leading companies will extend the goals of their online community activities to the design of enhanced service processes, such as social CRM, according to a study released by Gartner today. Social CRM for customer service has the potential to bring new and dynamic methods for improving customer service, and in doing so is creating opportunities for new and existing providers in the customer service and contact center infrastructure markets.

“Social CRM for customer service has only recently entered into the realm of contact center infrastructure and customer service software components, where it has been met with significant hype despite a limited number of field deployments,” said Drew Kraus, research vice president at Gartner. “There is strong corporate awareness, including at corporate executive levels, of social networks and their potential impact on corporate brand management and customer service perception. We expect the high-profile nature of social networks and social CRM for customer service to rapidly advance adoption from early adopter to mainstream deployments despite the volatile and rapid evolution of social networks in general.”

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